


Tempo Has Reached Critical Level

by fembuck



Category: The Hollows
Genre: F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-12
Updated: 2009-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-24 16:56:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fembuck/pseuds/fembuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The there’s a heat wave and Cincy, and the temperature is rising inside the church as well as outside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tempo Has Reached Critical Level

Call me old fashioned, but I believe that a person should be able to enter their kitchen without having the bejesus scared out of them.Maybe that makes me a square, or a fuddy-duddy.Maybe that makes me “uncool,” an old dinosaur that you can’t teach new tricks to or whatever.But so be it.I’m going to take a stand.I’m going to state firmly, bravely, and emphatically that I think that a person should be able to walk into their kitchen first thing in the afternoon without getting sucker punched into submission before they can even make it to the coffee pot.Hey, maybe it’s not the popular position to take nowadays, but it’s the position I’m taking, goddammit!That’s how I feel.

Unfortunately, for me that Ivy doesn’t feel the same way.

I know Ivy doesn’t feel the same way, because when I walked into the kitchen first thing in the afternoon, I got sucker punched into submission before I could even make it to the coffee pot!And it was Ivy’s fault, all Ivy’s fault.It was completely, utterly, and undeniably Ivy’s fault.Ivy.Who was standing there in the kitchen, in front of the stove, making breakfast, dressed like a naughty college co-ed!

I mean really, who does that?Who just stands there, in the kitchen, making breakfast, dressed like that!All she was wearing were a pair of tiny, wee, miniscule little panties!Just those teeny-weeny little panties and a tiny, clingy, thin little spaghetti string tank top.She was just standing there, her pale skin glistening luminously in the pale afternoon sunlight!Cooking bacon!Dressed like that!Who does that?

Ivy does that, I learned.Ivy does that, and I end up getting sucker punched into submission by it before I can even make it to the coffee pot.

I mean, alright, _fiiiiiiiiiine_.There’s a heat wave going on, and the church is approximately one degree hotter than hell.But still, there’s no excuse of that level of undress.Short-shorts would’ve kept her just as cool, and **not** sucker punched me into submission before I could even make it to the coffee pot.Because, heat or no heat, a person can’t just dress like that and expect not to be looked at, stared at, gazed at, in their teeny tiny little panties and clingy, thin little spaghetti string tank top.The straightest woman in the world wouldn’t be able to ignore all of that, in their kitchen, cooking bacon!And at this point I have to admit that I’m nowhere close to being the straightest woman in the world.

“Rachel?” Ivy asked, turning to face me with a curious expression on her face.

Apparently she realized that I had been sucker punished into submission before I had even made it to the coffee pot and was worried about how long it was taking me to recover.

“God yes,” I moaned softly, blinking as a particularly tantalizing bead of sweat trailed glisteningly down Ivy’s, long, graceful neck.“I mean, yes?” I said, blinking rapidly a second later.That’s what I had meant to say.It was!I swear!Shut up!

“You’re staring,” Ivy said, and I was certain that her voice was lower and more … growly than usual.

“And you’re …!” I automatically started to shot back before I trailed off.I had suddenly become captivated as Ivy lifted her hand to brush some dark hair out of her eyes while the bacon sizzled … uh, hotly beside her, and I honestly and truly couldn’t remember what I was about to say before she had moved.

“What?” Ivy asked tiredly.

I wasn’t surprised by her tone.She was often exasperated while dealing with me.I suspected I _should_ have been offended by it, I think most people would have been.But mostly I found it kind of sweet.Ivy looked like a gigantic toddler when she was exasperated, a gigantic, sexy toddler … and, okay, I just majorly creeped myself out.

“You know!” I accused immediately, not wanting to think about how cute and sexy, and completely unlike a toddler Ivy was.

“If I knew I wouldn’t have asked,” Ivy replied calmly, the black of her eyes expanding minutely as she stared at me.

“Yes you would have,” I insisted a little petulantly.And it was true.When I was bugging her, Ivy could be a real jerk that way.

Ivy smirked at that, graciously conceding the point, and it made me want to lick her like a Popsicle.

That thought gave me pause, because try as I might, I couldn’t really think of a platonic explanation for wanting to like someone like a Popsicle.Not one.Desperately I decided that it had something to do with the heat wave, although in the back of my mind I admitted to myself that it probably had more to do with me kind of secretly being a bit of a ‘mo.

God, I was!I really was!I totally was kind of a bit of a ‘mo.I looked at Ivy, I did!I stared at her.I had thoughts about licking her like a Popsicle, and I often really, really, really, like totally, badly wanted to just crawl up into her arms and lay there listening to her heart beat.

I had to fight very hard not to drop to the floor and begin to kick my feet and wave my arms around spastically, because it just wasn’t fair, dammit!I shouldn’t want to run my tongue over her sweat slicked skin, until my tongue dipped into the hollow of her throat, lapping at the pooled moisture there, before I slowly teased my way up lips which were parted in anticipation of my touch.And … wow, that was detailed a description … which just made me want to lick her like a Popsicle even more.

I focused on Ivy’s generous chest as it rose and fell in time with her breaths, and felt the urge to suck on something again.

I sighed, and was forced to acknowledge that I sucked at being straight, which was mildly disappointing since at one point I had been so good at it.I mean, really, I had been a champ.If they gave awards out for stuff like that, I’m sure that I would have had one.Back in the day, I just, I was **so good** at being straight.I didn’t even have to try, and I certainly wouldn’t have cared about teeny-weeny little pants or thin clingy tank tops … unless I was the one wearing them.But, now … now I sucked at being straight.There would be no award for me, only an uncomfortably warm feeling in my pants.

“Okay, maybe I would have,” Ivy admitted, drawing my attention back over to her.“But I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” she continued, smirking in a way that made me feel like Gayella Gayerson from Gayville, Gaymerica.It also made me suspect that she knew _exactly_ what I was talking about.See, I told you she could be a jerk that way.

I licked my lips as I focused on hers.I was sure that I could see a little fang, just a tantalizing little hint, and I swayed forward to try and get a better look before I thought better of it and caught myself mid-sway.

I was pathetic.I was an embarrassment.I was like a fourteen year old boy, who had gotten a brief glimpse of side-boob and I wanted more.I was so ashamed of myself and yet …

“You’re all …” I began, still distracted by the thought of fang, plus the added thought of side-boob, which was just swell.God, it sucked hard to be me.

“Rachel, you’re really going to need to finish that sentence,” Ivy interrupted as I stared at her in what I hoped was a veiled fog of lust.

“You’re all **hot**!” I finally exclaimed, gesturing up and down the length of her body.“You’re standing there, in these _little things,_ in these little _tight, clingy_ things.In the kitchen.Cooking bacon.”

“And?” Ivy asked, arching a thin, perfectly sculpted eyebrow.Everything on her was perfectly sculpted.Even her toes were perfectly sculpted.I’d looked.

“And,” I said drawing the word out as long as humanly possible.“It’s a little distracting!” I exclaimed.“To just walk into the kitchen, and have you be all … ‘Oh, hi, I’m Ivy.I’m just in my skimpy underwear cooking bacon.Don’t mind me.’It’s like stepping into a photo-shoot for a Men’s magazine.I feel like I should throw a bucket of milk on you and then lick it off or something.”

Ivy blinked.

“A bucket of milk?” she questioned, her eyebrows knitting together in a way that me feel all warm and gooey inside my heart … and my pants.

“Or something, or nothing, or …whatever, it doesn’t matter,” I exclaimed waving my hand around dismissively.“The point is … why aren’t you wearing real clothes?”

“It’s hot out, Rachel,” Ivy responded slowly.Her voice was the model of patience.It was as if she was talking to a child who was gearing up to throw a tantrum, and as much as I wanted to be offended by her talking to me like a kindergartener, I _did_ find her voice soothing, and it calmed me down a little.

“Still,” I complained.

Ivy was silent.I think she was waiting for me to add more.The surprise was on her though, cause that was about as good as my argument got.

“Still?” Ivy said, drawing the word out questioningly when it became clear that I wasn’t going to add anything else to my previous word.

“You should wear real clothes,” I said morosely, looking down at the floor as I crossed my arms over my chest defensively.“It’s distracting.”

“Why?” Ivy asked quietly.

I ignored her for a moment, concentrating on everything and anything else besides her.I noticed that I could no longer hear the sound of bacon frying and I wondered when she had taken it off.

“Jenks’ kids …” I muttered finally, still looking down at the ground.

“Are nice and cool in the stump, and wouldn’t come in here if someone paid them,” Ivy responded.“Okay, maybe if someone paid them, but no one’s offered to so there’s next to no chance even one of them will be in here until the wave breaks.”

I said nothing in response to her statement because it was true.The pixies had a pretty sweet deal out back.So sweet in fact that it a moment of heat induced insanity, I had riffled through my books for a while looking for a shrinking spell, so that I could hide out in the cool earth as well.

“Why is it distracting, Rachel?”Her voice was incredibly soft, incredibly.I was surprised that I had even been able to hear her.

I sighed irritably.“It just is.”

“Why?” Ivy pressed, an urgent quality entering her whisper soft voice.

“Because …” I hedged, turning my head away from her.

“Because why?”She wouldn’t let it go.She just wouldn’t let it go.

“Just because,” I responded unwilling to back down either, though I could feel myself beginning to fray at the edges.

“Why?”

“Because!” I replied irritably, my voice rising as my frustration did.

“Because why?!?” Ivy asked again, her own voice rising to meet mine.

“Because!”I yelled again, purposefully choosing to be as vague as possible this time to annoy her.

“Because!Because!”Ivy parroted back tauntingly, turning her head from side to side in a mocking motion.“Because why!!!?” she asked straightening and taking a step towards me.

“Because it makes me want to …!” I began, looking up to meet her eyes.Only a thin ring of brown was left in Ivy’s eyes, and her lips were parted slightly as she stared at me, her chest rising and falling rapidly.

She looked glorious.

My eyes widened and my heart began to beat double-time.I wanted to do something.I wanted to taste flesh.I wanted to do something raw, and hot.I wanted to lean forward and kiss her.No, no, no!I wanted to lean forward and lick her, and bite her!I wanted to bite her.And then lick her, and kiss her, and bite her again.

I closed my eyes and reared back slightly, trying to escape the incense around me that was fueling my mind, making it spin in erotic circles until I couldn’t control the thoughts, until I felt like I was on George Jetson’s out of control treadmill.

“It makes you want to what?” Ivy asked, her nostrils flaring for a just a moment as she spoke.She was scenting the air. She probably had been since I had first walked into the room.She was asking, but she already knew the answer to her question.She could smell the truth, as she always could.The question was whether I would actually be honest with her this time, or lie to her, lie to us both as I always had in the past.

“Kiss you,” I breathed out, opening my eyes so that when I spoke we were staring at each other again.

Ivy breathed in deeply, and then exhaled.Her eyes fluttered shut, and she breathed in deeply once more, and then, slowly out again.She repeated that process three more times before her eyes slowly opened.

“Is that such a bad thing?” she asked finally, her eyes holding mine, searching them for the truth.“Is it really such a horrible proposition?” she continued, her shoulders slumping as she looked down at the ground, her voice dropping so low that I had to strain to hear her.“Am I so terrible that the thought of wanting me causes you this much distress?”

“No,” I breathed out immediately, automatically reaching out for her at the sound of her devastated, depressed voice.“Ivy, no,” I said touching her arm gently.“It’s not you …” I continued, my words halting when Ivy released a dark chuckle and angled away from me before stepping to the side, moving deeper in the kitchen and farther away from me.

“But it is me, isn’t it?” she asked, now over by the table she had stolen from her parent’s when we first moved in together.“You don’t fight your feelings, your desires with anyone else.I,” she tilted her head up, angling it towards the window which she stared out of for a few seconds before continuing.“I’ve been around you long enough to know what your emotions smell like: fear, amusement, sadness, contentment, irritation … arousal.”

I breathed in sharply at the last point on her list, but she didn’t look over at me.She didn’t take her eyes off of the window.

“You love the others.You let them love you.I’m the only one you push away,” Ivy continued, her voice becoming strained as she continued to speak, though she continued to stare out of the window.

“That’s different,” I began, shifting uncomfortably on my feet.I had thought I was in love with Nick, and I knew that I had loved Kisten.But it was different in the beginning with them.I had liked them before the sex and intimacy, but I hadn’t needed either of them before then.If it had gone bad, that would have sucked, but life would have gone on, aother day, another dollar and all that jazz.But Ivy was different.I needed Ivy.If it went bad, I couldn’t just scoop my fist and go “‘dems the breaks”.Life wouldn’t go on without Ivy, at least not the life I was living and loved.Losing Ivy would change everything, and I didn’t want things to change.“They were …”

“Men?” Ivy interjected, her head turning slightly in my direction though she still wasn’t looking at me directly.

My eyes widened at that, but she wasn’t paying attention to me.I took umbrage to her response.I was **not** going to say that!

“That doesn’t matter,” she continued before I could protest.“You know it doesn’t.Your body responds to me.You want me.Even if you’ve never desired another woman in your life, you desire me.And you could have me.God, I haven’t tried to hide how much I want to give myself to you.But you,” her eyes fell away from window, away from the light until she was staring blankly at the back wall.“You push me away.Always.I’m the only one.The only one you push away.So it must be me. Let’s not lie to each other.It must be me.”

I stalked over towards Ivy, angry at her for thinking what she did about my motives, and angry at myself for never really talking to her, and explaining things to her, because from her perspective what she said seemed to make perfect sense.She sometimes seemed to read my moods like a book, but she couldn’t read my mind.

“You’re stupid!” I said shoving Ivy in the shoulders with both of my hands.

Her eyes immediately went black and she growled at me and straightened to her full height.

Looking at her, I decided that shoving her hadn’t been such a great idea.

“You’re stupid,” I said again, but this time I didn’t touch her.

Her posture and expression didn’t change, and I wondered if I should drop the ‘you’re stupid’s’ along with the shoving.I didn’t seem to be quite calming her down.

“I’m not pushing you away, Ivy,” I said, my voice gentling as tears began to fill my eyes.“I’m holding you still,” I said balling my hands into fists at my side to control the urge I had to shove her again.“I’m keeping you with me.”

Ivy was silent for a moment, and then a long suffering sigh emerged from her before she moved from around me and paced back over across the kitchen towards the sink.

“I don’t understand you,” Ivy said a few seconds later, her voice weary as she hunched over the sink with her back towards me.“You’re not denying that you’re attracted to me, and you say I’m stupid for thinking that you’re scared of me, but still you won’t kiss me.”

“I never said I wasn’t scared,” I said to her back, watching as her body stiffened at my words.“I’m scared Ivy, but not of you.I’m scared of losing you.I suck at relationships, Ivy.I suck at them.I’m garbage.I always get left, always.But I can’t lose you.I can’t, Ivy.I need you, and if I kiss you, and we do this, I’m afraid I’m going to suck and be garbage in a relationship with you, and that one day you’ll decide I’m not worth it, and you’ll be gone.”

The silence grew as Ivy remained hunched over the sink, and as it did a trembling started in her body, and began to grow and grow until she was literally shaking.And then, when I thought that she was about to shake apart, she rounded on me.

“You’re the stupid one, Rachel!You’re so stupid!” she yelled.

She yelled?She yelled.Ivy hardly ever yelled.I was shocked into staring at her quietly.

“I’ve worked with you!I’ve lived with you.I don’t think I would be taking any liberties to say I’ve seen you at your worst, and I’m still here.I haven’t left yet, Rachel.You haven’t scared me away.What on God’s green earth makes you think that I would run away if you kissed me?”

I frowned.My reasoning sounded … flawed, when she put it that way.

“I mean, what more could we possibly put each other through that we haven’t already?” Ivy continued before I could say anything.“Love makes you strong, Rachel.It makes life easier to deal with, not harder.Loving me isn’t going to send me running away.Pulling me close isn’t going to make me flee.But eventually, Rachel, eventually holding me still will.”

“I … Ivy,” I whispered, partly stunned into silence by the passion with which she had just spoken me, and partly scared into it by her last sentence and thought of her leaving.“I don’t want you to …”

“Stop talking, Rachel,” Ivy said gripping the edge of island countertop tightly with her fingers.“Stop talking,” she said, her voice getting softer and softer until she dropped her head down to look at the counter top.“Just stop talking.”

“Okay,” I whispered softly, before biting down on my bottom lip to physically stop myself from being able to talk when I realized I had just done exactly what she had asked me not to.

I watched her, standing there hunched in on herself, and took a tentative step towards her, and then another step and another step until finally I was standing beside her.It was probably a stupid thing to do.She was in her ‘count to ten’ position (kind of) even though she wasn’t in her usual spot, and her emotions were obviously frayed.And I was the cause.I was the cause of her distress.As I so often was.

I reached out and touched her arm softly, hesitantly, my fingers automatically jerking away from her when she flinched, but I slowly brought them back to her, unwillingly to back away this time, unwilling to let fear rule me.

I parted my lips to speak, but closed them before I could utter a sound.She didn’t want me to speak, so I wouldn’t.I shifted closer to her, slowly, ever so slowly, until I was pressed up against her, and then I pressed my lips against her exposed shoulder.She shivered against me, but I held still, I stayed close, and when her body relaxed a little I kissed her shoulder once more, and then I leaned forward and pressed a kiss against her neck.I was careful to avoid any scars, but she still shivered as my lips touched her skin, and I found myself clutching at her waist, holding her tightly in an attempt to keep her steady.I tilted my head up, and pressed a kiss against her jaw, my lips lingering against the soft flesh for a moment before I shifted once more, and then I finally, _finally_ pressed my lips against hers.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered against her lips, unable to keep quiet anymore, as her hands moved to my waist and her lips began to move against my own.“I’m sorry,” I whispered again, in between kisses.“I’m sorry.I’m so sorry,” I breathed out before Ivy took advantage of my parted lips and seized the opportunity to deepen our kiss.“I suck,” I murmured against Ivy’s lips as she shifted our positions so that I was pressed up against the island counter.“I’m garbage,” I sighed as her lips trailed down to my throat.“I’m the worst,” I gasped as her tongue ran over the sensitive flesh.

“And I’m still here,” Ivy whispered pulling back so that she could see my eyes.“I’m still here,” she whispered fiercely, her voice shaking with love and devotion.

“And how do I keep you?” I breathed out, my chest rising and falling rapidly as I stared into Ivy’s black eyes.My hands clutched at her as I spoke, holding onto her desperately, the action a physical manifestation of my _need_ to keep her in my life, of need to be with her always.

“Pull me close to you,” Ivy replied, a beseeching, needful quality entering her voice as she stared at me with hopeful eyes.

So, I did.And once she was in my arms again, I never planned to let her go.

The End

.

 


End file.
